I was just reading a story about the birth of Jesus to my daughter for bedtime. I’m not sure why I didn’t think about it before, but given the fact that Joseph returned to the city of his birth and raising he would have known some people. Wouldn’t you think there would have been some kind of family around there still that they could have stayed with instead of the manger?
Wasn’t Bethlehem the ancestral home of Joseph? Not his hometown necessarily? I could be wrong. For instance if I charted back my relatives to where my great great great great grandpappy lived there might not be anyone there who knew me?
I’ve heard before that the word translated in most English bibles as “the inn” (”She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” Luke 2:7) pretty much means “Guest Room” and was used in Greek to describe both a room in a Hotel and the room where guests would stay in your own house.
It is likely that Joseph & Mary DID stay with Joseph’s family but, because of the census and hence the number of people that would have been there, they weren’t able to fit in the guest room, so slept in the animal room. (I have also heard that Israeli houses typically had a room in the house where the animals slept.)
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